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I was looking at the medicinal mushrooms in pill form at our natural foods grocery place today and saw that they all used the mycelium from reishi, maitake, turkey-tail, and a few others. I was wondering if anyone knows the relative medicinal properties of mycelium vs. fruits of these or other species? I'm guessing the mycelium is used because some of these (especially reishi) take a long time to mature, but I wonder if the mycelium is as strong of medicine?

I guess it depends on what kind of medicinal regime that you are trying to accmomplish. If it is a more traditional regime, such as those from asian cultures, they would unquestionably use fruit body extracts or powders over mycelium, because the fruit bodies have been and always will be stronger from in that healing method. Mind, of course, can have a very strong affect on the ultimate outcome of ones health.

However mycelia do have some of the same active compounds that fruit bodies have such as the complex carbohydrate molecules and so on. It is definitely easier and faster to produce. Now if you grow alot of mycelium and make a concentrated compound. Further, it is also known that some compounds are only made during certain stages of the mushroom life cycle, so I find it hard to believe that the mycelial extract is the same as or as complex as an extract that can be obtained from a fruit body. There may be compounds present in the mycelia that are not present in the fruit body (and visa versa) Our current research methods focus on one compound at a time or one treatment at at time, and I don't think we've studied them enough yet to say for certain.

Personally, if you are going for the herbal root, the mind is so important that I would say that fruit bodies are the stronger medicine.

hmm... i dunno, i just read that some of the reishi mycelium capsules are grown by fungi perfecti, it seems that they'd know better if the mycelium wasn't as good. I imagine the fruit would have to be stronger tho. maybe the fruit is smaller doses but it is more economical to grow and sell the mycelium?

The cultivation of mushrooms for the production of medicinal compounds is a fairly new science, dating only from the late 1970's. Since that time, there have been a number of bio-active compounds of interest identified from the fruitbody, from the mycelium and from the residual culture broth. In greater than 90% of the cases, the compounds present in the different life stages are exactly identical. But in a few instances there are differences, where substantially greater amounts of some target compound can be extracted from one growth state as compared to another.

Almost all of the research done in the last few years has shown that the greatest biological activities take place in the extra-cellular compounds (metabolic exudates), as compared to compounds from the mycelium or fruitbodies. There are some compounds found in both the mycelium and the fruitbodies that are not extra-cellular in nature, and which have important function in the body.The Beta-Glucans from the cell wall fall into this category.

There are a number of drugs produced from Shiitake-Lentinula edodes; Lentinan (from the fruit body) LEM (from mycelium) and KS-2 (from residual culture broth).Extracts which are made for the specific purpose of concentrating out specific compounds. Just as in the production of penicillin, the fungus (Penicillum sp.) is grown in liquid culture, then the active ingredient (Penicillin) is extracted from the residual culture broth. Specific target compound, specific extraction procedure. This works very well.

For example, to extract Lentinan from Shiitake mushrooms is a pretty straight forward chemical process. But what about another compound present in Shiitake, the one called Eritadenine? This compound is useful in the treatment of high cholesterol, while Lentinan is used for the treatment of Cancer. If you extract Shiitake by hot water, then use alcohol to precipitate out the polysaccharide fraction as is the popular extraction process, the Lentinan is concentrated and the resultant product is effective for Cancer treatment or immune stimulation.

However, with this process you loose the Eritadenine, and the extract has no effect on blood cholesterol. So, even though the raw product shows great effectiveness in treating high cholesterol, the "Standardized Extract" is useless for this purpose.

So what is the more valuable product, the raw full spectrum Shiitake, or the "standardized extract"? The answer is neither, or both. It really depends on what you are hoping to achieve with the supplement. For general Health Supplement useage, the best product is the one that has the greatest effectivness over a broad range of conditions.

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Almost all of the research done in the last few years has shown that the greatest biological activities take place in the extra-cellular compounds (metabolic exudates), as compared to compounds from the mycelium or fruitbodies. There are some compounds found in both the mycelium and the fruitbodies that are not extra-cellular in nature, and which have important function in the body.The Beta-Glucans from the cell wall fall into this category.

Dang, seems that Chart has been moved. If anyone has any knowledge of anything similar in existence, please let us know!

In addition, my mycological knowledge is limited. Could you please elaborate on "metabolic exudates". Am I close when assuming it is compounds excreted from the mycelium into substrate?